Solutions for different situations

Even with hearing aids your child may still have difficulty hearing everything around them in certain places, below takes you through the different challenges they face and the solutions that can help:

Outside:

Why it’s a problem:

Children participate in many activities outside school or the home environment and for a child, these activities are crucial for development, however they can often pose serious hearing difficulties for children with hearing loss. There are a number of scenarios that can create difficult hearing situations outside of the home or classroom, for example at the playground where the noise of other children playing and nearby road noise can be distracting or during car journeys when their parent’s voice is usually travelling away from them.

Why something needs to be done:

As well as being key to helping develop language skills, being able to hear clearly also helps build the important social skills that are acquired through interaction with others. If there is a lot of background noise it can also be tricky to hear commands and warnings from a parent, which can even pose a safety risk.

What can help:

With the help of a Roger system, being out and about no longer has to be difficult. It ‘bridges the understanding gap’, bringing speech sounds directly into the child’s ears to assist them when lip reading isn’t possible and help to make conversation just as direct and personal as face-to-face chat. This is essential during the critical period of speech and language development.

At home:

Why it’s a problem:

A home can be a surprisingly difficult listening environment for a child with hearing loss. Listening across a room for example can pose a hearing challenge, as can things such as:

The banging of cutlery and plates

Conversations at the dinner table

Watching TV

Listening to music

Chatter and playing with friends

Why something needs to be done:

It is important when a child is developing to make the most of every learning opportunity. If your child can’t hear properly at home it could make their development in the early years of their life much more difficult.

What can help:

A Roger system can improve your child’s ability to communicate normally, cutting through distracting noise during group activities and overcoming the effect of short distances on speech understanding. Children who are old enough to enjoy cartoons, music and computer games should be able to hear them at a distance from the TV or when background noise is around them. Roger technology will plug straight into any multimedia device’s audio-out socket, letting your child hear sounds such as TV programs, MP3‘s, video games and educational software via their Roger receivers, without needing to raise the volume.

At school or nursery:

Why it’s a problem:

Classrooms are noisy places and are becoming even more so as many activities are now undertaken in groups or at a distance. This can be confusing for a child with hearing loss as they have to cope with many different distracting noises at once. The physical effort of listening and filtering out what’s useful information and what isn’t can be difficult and tiring, which can in turn make it difficult for them to concentrate over extended periods of time.

Why something needs to be done:

If a child falls behind in their development, it can be difficult to catch up again and as they get older, they may become more self conscious regarding their ability. Critical aspects of language acquisition and social development are acquired inside school or nursery and these situations are now part of everyday life for most youngsters so it’s important that your child feels happy and comfortable there.

What can help:

A hearing device can break the barriers caused by hearing loss and make school and nursery a much more enjoyable and educational experience for your son or daughter. Using a hearing device with a Roger receiver connected to their hearing aids means that your child will be able to easily focus on the teacher’s words without becoming confused or tired. This in turn is likely to boost your child’s confidence in communicating and socialising with other children.